Various applications of electronic circuitry involve the use of integrated circuits (ICs). ICs, for example, facilitate the ability to incorporate a very large number of circuit elements into a very small area. ICs are particularly useful when active components, such as transistors and diodes, are needed to implement a particular design. Using today's semiconductor technology, for example, hundreds of millions and even billions of active devices may be incorporated into a single IC.
Despite the advances in today's semiconductor technology, however, device input/output (I/O) remains as a critical design issue facing electronic component designers. In particular, device I/O directly impacts the physical dimensions of electronic components, such as ICs, since each I/O connection affects the physical footprint of the IC. That is to say, for example, that each I/O connection impacts the physical dimensions of the IC in some manner, since each I/O connection requires some amount of conductive area for signal ingress/egress, as well as some amount of non-conductive area that surrounds the conductive area for signal isolation.
Thus, one aspect of reducing the physical dimensions of electronic components includes the reduction of the size of each I/O connection and its associated isolation area. The elimination of I/O connections associated with the electronic component may alternately be employed to reduce the physical dimensions of the electronic components.
Elimination of the I/O connection may simply require the elimination of the function that is provided by the particular I/O connection, thus obviating the need for the I/O connection. Conversely, I/O connection reduction may require combining one or more functions to be facilitated by a single I/O connection. In such an instance, the I/O connections associated with the combined functions may be eliminated, thus reducing the physical area that was required to accommodate the eliminated I/O connections.
Eliminating functions that are facilitated by a given I/O connection may not necessarily be the preferred method to reduce the physical and/or electrical characteristics of an electronic device. Efforts continue, therefore, to identify functions associated with I/O connections that may be combined into a single I/O connection, in order to reduce the physical dimensions of the electronic device. In addition, components associated with the combined functions may also be reduced depending upon the connections/functions being consolidated.
Consolidation of I/O connections may also be effective to reduce the number of signal routes within the IC, or conversely, to reduce the number of signal routes between ICs, such as on a printed circuit board. Such consolidation may also be effective to reduce the number of components that may be required, such as clock distribution circuits, when the I/O connection being consolidated is a clock signal connection.